Yankees edge Red Sox, 8-7, as Stephen Drew drives in 4 runs

BOSTON — As of Sunday night, it is official – the sparkle is back in the Yankees’ offense.
Three days after switching clubhouses, Stephen Drew saw to that. So did Carlos Beltran, Brett Gardner and a long supporting cast who clanged hits all around Fenway Park.

Along the way, there was a hint of gloom with another injury to another starting pitcher, but a string of sturdy relievers sealed up a game filled with chaotic turns. Boston had seven runs and eight hits by the fourth inning, then nothing past that. The Yanks closed out a six-game road trip by defeating the Red Sox, 8-7.

They survived breathlessly, with their closer, David Robertson, getting Dustin Pedroia to ground out at the end of a nine-pitch confrontation, moments after Pedroia barely missed a home run. The shot, traveling near vintage Carlton Fisk territory, soared past the left field pole for a foul ball.

But as some things rise with the Yankees in their checkerboard season, others fall. The Yankees suffered another possible blow to a pitching staff that has been staggered by one injury after another. David Phelps, who stepped into the rotation as other starters have fallen, left the game after the second inning, his poor showing prompting the removal. But when the pitcher reached the dugout he let on that his right elbow was bothering him.

“Welcome to Boston,” Phelps said dejectedly after the game.

Phelps and Joe Girardi acknowledged for the first time that the pitcher had begun feeling discomfort during an outing on July 18 against Cincinnati. That prompted an MRI which, player and manager said, turned out “clean.” Phelps pitched credibly in his two starts since, allaying concerns, even as the elbow kept nagging at him.

Through his pregame warm-up session Sunday night and over 53 pitches, the elbow did not loosen up, he said.

In a time when elbow pangs evoke fear of Tommy John surgery, Phelps, 27, groped to describe the sensation, especially, he said, because he had never experienced this sort of pain. He will see the doctor again within the next few days, the team said.

“I don’t know what is bad,” Phelps said as his teammates clamored around him to dress and get ready for a flight to New York. “Today was what set me off,” he said. “It was worse. I had to say something.”

Asked how he felt right then in the clubhouse, he replied: “It feels good. I’m not moving it.”

One more fresh face for the Yankees, Esmil Rogers, stepped into the breach and provided three hitless innings to gain the victory in his Yankees’ debut.

Over the last week, the Yankees and Red Sox have redrafted their blueprints, Boston dispatching star players in trades and New York trying to massage its roster into a true contender. The defending champion Red Sox are a last-place club. The Yankees entered the night middling in third place.

Still, Fenway Park perks up with the Yankees in town. Tickets atop the Green Monster priced at $100 were being hawked on Yawkey Way for $600.

It depends on how you look at games that go on and on and on, but that fare bought customers either a grand double feature filled with mammoth home runs, line drives and lead changes, or another numbing marathon of walks, foul balls and wayward pitching.

The first inning persisted for 34 minutes, the second inning for 29 minutes. Boston’s starter, Clay Buchholz, threw 114 pitches – nearly half for balls – over five innings. He was staked to a 3-0 lead in the first inning, only to lose it in the second when the Yankees scored three of their own.

The Red Sox went up, 5-3, on a two-run homer from Pedroia in the bottom of the second, but that hardly settled things. The hands of the person controlling the manually-operated scoreboard in left field kept darting in and out, trying to keep pace with the rat-a-tat offense.

In the fourth the Yankees got to within one. But in the bottom of the inning David Ortiz hit a 420-foot homerun to center field, and the Red Sox had their three-run lead back at 7-4. For the sixth straight game Carlos Beltran had at least two hits. His double in the fifth inning started a three-run uprising that brought the teams even at seven. The rally was capped by a two-run single by Drew, who had his signature game as a Yankee, driving in four.

Dismay over Phelps punctured the team’s mood. He is not C.C. Sabathia or Masahiro Tanaka, but until Sunday night, he was a rare sight for the Yankees – a starting pitcher still standing. Phelps entered the night at 5-5 with a 3.89 earned run average, steady if not spectacular.